The Girl in the Back: A Female Drummer's Life with Bowie, Blondie, and the '70s Rock Scene

by Laura Davis-Chanin

ASCAP Deems Taylor Award Winner and named one of 2018 Top Ten Music Books by Billboard!

Nineteen seventy-seven. New York City. Dark. Dangerous. Thrilling. Punk Rock. Blondie. David Bowie. Drinking. Drugs. Happening at the speed of light.

Seventeen-year old Laura, quaking within her skin while the bursting punk rock revolution explodes around her, starts a band with her teenage friends called the Student Teachers. She's the drummer. They play legendary clubs – CBGB, Max's Kansas City, Hurrah – they rehearse madly, write songs, and tour the East Coast.

All between final exams at school.

In comes Jimmy Destri from Blondie. He thinks the Student Teachers are terrific! And then – he falls in love with Laura. He pulls her into the glamorous life of Blondie and introduces her to David Bowie. Bowie takes an interest in Laura's band, attends their rehearsals, and sets them up to open for Iggy Pop at the Palladium on Halloween 1979. It's exhilarating! It's the beginning of amazing success in rock 'n' roll!

Until it all comes to a stunning stop.

After playing a show at Town Hall in 1980, Laura is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Does it all fall apart?

Later, at a dinner with Bowie, he whispers something to Laura. And it helps her save her life.

In prose that flows like music, Laura Davis-Chanin presents a rich work of narrative nonfiction that is not only deeply personal but also revealing of the punk rock heyday in New York City. Infused with rare photographs, this book is a journey through a unique, ephemeral life experience.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography

326 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 1, 2018

About the author

Winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for Excellence in Writing and named one of Billboard's top 10 Music books of 2018 for her book "The Girl in the Back," Laura has spent her career as an attorney but is now pursuing her second love, writing. Her first love, her daughters, bring her eternal sunshine everyday. In 2020, her “second book, “I Am Michael Alago" about the inspiring music producer, Michael Alago, who discovered Metallica, was released and last year, her book on the enigmatic musician, Alan Vega with a Foreword by Bruce Springsteen was released. She is currently working on a novel based on true events entitled "A Finished Noise.”

Reviews

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is exactly my cup of tea. Fantastic rock star memoir of a point in music history that would probably my first request in a time machine. Her memories of Blondie and Bowie are captivating, and her stories of being a teenaged drummer in a pink band are really interesting.

[Nestor Rychtyckyj · Rating 5 out of 5]

You have probably never heard of the Student Teachers unless you happened to be hanging out in the NYC punk scene in the late 1970s. They were obviously never as successful as the Ramones, Talking Heads or Blondie and didn’t even quite make the second tier of bands like the Mumps or the Fast that I was enviously enjoying in those days in far-off Detroit. (Anywhere west of the Hudson River was “far-off”). Luckily, they did put a single on Ork Records that is included on the “New York, New York” compilation so I can enjoy their music while waiting for my Student Teachers – “A Complete Syllabus” set to come in.

Laura-Davis-Chanin was the drummer with the Student Teachers which she somehow accomplished while attending high school. She was part of the most exciting period of music and routinely saw the Ramones and Blondie at CBGBs and Max’s and then quickly moved to sharing the stage with legends like Iggy. The Student Teachers never did get a record deal and had broken up by 1980. By that time Laura was already out of the band and moved on with her life. Ii seems just like another rock and roll memoir about a band that didn’t quite make it and a chance to remember those times when we where all young and crazy and punk rock ruled our lives.

But “ A Girl in the Back” is a lot more than just another punk fable. Laura’s life becomes a Cinderella-like fantasy. Jimmy Destri from Blondie takes a personal interest in the Student Teachers and in Laura herself. Quickly, she finds herself caught up in a rockstar lifestyle and befriends her idol David Bowie. She is an excellent writer and her descriptions of being with Bowie are priceless. How does a high school kid get to hang with Bowie – well, it’s all here. At the peak of this crazy journey – her life changes forever when she is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. With some sage advice from David Bowie -she leaves this life forever and goes on being the person that she always wanted to be.

This is a fantastic book – it’s so much more than a punk rock memoir – it’s a story of life and how we all deal with it. It also teaches us how to overcome obstacles and how to move on to the next challenge. As an added bonus, it led me to re-discover the Student Teachers and the Mumps and all those other great bands because we all know that this music will live forever.

[Whitney · Rating 4 out of 5]

A review by Paula, here on GR, points out that the book's subtitle is misleading: "a female drummer's life with bowie, blondie, and the '70s rock scene." ABSOLULTELY. I borrowed this book because I was intrigued to read the story of a career musician. I was naively expecting a "glass ceiling" type of message; I was thinking the author would talk about her goal to prove herself in the overwhelming masculine world of rock and punk.

In actuality, no.

This memoir is a page turner, it's written with deep feeling and introspection. It allows for dialogue and reflection, it includes excerpts and paragraphs from the author's previous bandmates and colleagues. The book includes current life updates; the final pages give links to the author's current website and projects.

However, what it really does — it puts a spotlight on the frightening exploitation that happened. Author was a teen when these book events were going on. She makes sorts of apologies for herself, stating the theme of "teens make bad choices, ok?" Unfortunately, she was literally abused by her "mentors" and "boyfriend," who were fully grown adults, who knew exactly what they were doing, they were grooming her.

I fully acknowledge this author has talent, and intelligence. She writes about learning drums as if it was easy. She had full ability to gain a career in the rock scene, supposedly, if rock and punk gave accolades for talent, alone. But really it was an abusive scene, difficult to survive.

[Andrea Watson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book. Started it on the way to roller derby practice this morning and finished it before days end.

I did buy this book to see what it was like in the late 70s punk scene. I love the glimpses into history her writing provides, and the perspective of living at the time when Patti Smith has just blazed through with her influence; her music always playing in the background when the bands aren’t on. While the blurb on the book suggested that you get brought in to the punk world of CBGB’s, you do to an extent but the bigger stars remain distant from the writer. Laura writes about finding herself in situations where she has little to say to the people around her. I was there too at that age. I didn’t know it then but it was because I was so much younger than the people I was partying with.

Despite her place as a drummer in the band called the student teachers, she’s not so much a peer in the punk scene as I imagined while looking at the cover. She flutters and swoons over the attention she gets from the Blondie dude and Bowie, and clutches the pieces of this experience in a very 16 year old way. Before she knew it, she was a girlfriend rather than a drummer.

[Susannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm the target audience, because I love the musicians featured and so wish I'd lived back then. Late 70's New York seemed so much more vibrant and interesting, and egalitarian in a way. While my true love David Bowie is described as becoming so famous that he needs to hide in the backs of restaurants, there still seemed like there was more of a culture of being able to walk into Max's Kansas City, CBGB, etc. and hearing revolutionary music. Now everything is too expensive for any up-and-coming artist to live here. We can't hobnob with Blondie at the Mudd Clubb, but we can @ our favorite celebrities on Twitter. What a trade up.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thirty percent of the way through this book, I was ready to put it down. I couldn't tell what the point of the memoir was. Though I got invested enough in the interpersonal drama and their individual evolution to continue, the last ten percent felt like the point of the memoir was "rock and roll needs drugs, or at least it did, and some survive but many don't."

In the end, this book is about being true to yourself, even when so much of yourself seems to want a thing that it's hard to admit that you don't (or can't) really want it enough to go to the lengths that thing requires. That definitely is rock and roll. There are stories in here about education, drugs, relationships, etc. It was more interesting to hear about Debbie Harry and her persona at the same time as getting the author's perspective. Women in rock is an under-appreciated set of story lines (and why I checked out this book in the first place).

But you know what really got me about this book? This whole thing basically takes place in the span of four years: 1977 to 1981. Four years. In four years, we hear the story of a band that forms from music lovers who learn enough to play and write songs, to opening for regular touring acts, to headlining CBGB's in the late 70s. Even getting offered a recording contract. Hanging out with David Bowie. Meeting Blondie. And on and on.

I've been in bands since I was 16 years old. But I didn't live in New York City. And I wasn't as old as the author was in this book until the 80s. But damn if I didn't practice my ass off with my band through high school, through college, after college. And then several bands. Several records. A few small tours. And that resulted in exactly zero label interest, zero networking with rising stars, zero (I think?) headlining slots. Was it because I grew up in the suburbs? Was it because the recording industry was well-developed and severely armed when I was old enough to entertain the notion of joining it? But it reminded me how much of success in music is down to sheer dumb damn luck. And how long the ladder is to climb, because though I've never heard of the Student Teachers, even fewer people have ever heard of my bands.

Ultimately, I liked this book because of the one scene where the author realizes she doesn't want to live the life that stardom required. So many musicians have died on that hill: ones who desperately want to live that life but never get the opportunity; others that get the opportunity and take it but don't really want it and end up chewed up and spat out or dead. For every torn down rock club that was home to a scene there might be one band that came through there that made it, but it was home turf to probably 50 to 100 others that didn't. Your accountant, consultant, teacher, electrician, banker -- some of them were in those bands that failed to launch. And that's a sad, sad reality. And it's the reality that most musicians have to come to: accept your lot in life, whatever it is, or chase an imaginary genie for your whole life and miss out on anything else.

The hard part is that you don't stop missing part of that life, even if you make the choice to step away.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

I devoured this book. The author's story is compelling: nerdy (albeit Soho-raised), straight-A student by day, punk drummer by night, co-founder of one of the unsung but essential late-'70s punk bands, The Student Teachers. She goes on to befriend Bowie and live with Jimmy Destri from Blondie (who was a coke-addled jerk to her, although a big supporter of her band), and cope with young-adult identity crises and a serious medical diagnosis. Bowie and Debbie Harry are portrayed as kindly if distant mentor figures, but the bulk of the book is devoted to detailing the glorious downtown NYC music scene and the sheer romance of putting a band together from scratch and reveling in its progress. (Other members of the band chime in at the end, too) My only complaint is the cheesy and misleading subtitle, which was most likely not the author's doing.

[Howard Schott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not just a music memoir filled with sex, drugs, and gossip (though readers will find a variety of each), this is a coming of age story set in New York City during the punk scene of the late 1970s. The background elements are all here: dangerous and exhilarating NYC streets; art and music of the time; idiosyncratic and creative young people squatting in apartments; the seminal bands of the time. More than this, the book is a testament to the courage of a teenager with absent parents who finds her way in a world that was wild and frightening to many. It is also a tribute to the surprising adult figures who provided kindness and hope. Davis says she never intended to write the book, but felt compelled after the death of David Bowie. While he does not appear until the middle, Bowie is the central figure, acting as guide and inspiration to the young Davis. His presence—plus those of a beloved English teacher with high expectations and Davis’ dauntless younger sister—enlarge the story and introduce broader, enduring themes: the role of art and artistry, the life of the intellect, acts of communion (see Debbie Harry's offering of apple pie and comforting words), and definitions of love. The narrative makes clear that Davis’ life was never easy—during this time or after—but her voice is not resentful. If anything, it remains infused with honesty and generosity. She offers plenty of space for the voices of her bandmates to further illuminate the dizzying times they shared. When Davis sees Bowie for the last time, it is impossible not to think about him in the "Lazarus" video—at one moment the man in his early 30s, taking New York by storm, at another, the one stiffly mimicking his old dance moves in front of a wardrobe/coffin. As Bowie disappears from Davis’ view, the loss becomes universal, and Bowie’s memory a muse to us all.

[Allan Bowley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Headline “The memory that inspired a book"

I have to confess more than a special interest in reviewing this book. I had the pleasure of interviewing Laura Davis-Chanin on a radio show, in Spain!
I recall flicking through the book for about 10 minutes before the show and was immediately taken by the superb images captured of that era in New York´s Soho district. Here was a memoir that came from the heart; Laura had been thrust into this world of literally sex, drugs & rock n roll – the clichés were to be expected. But this story was about a short period in her young life that, although brief, tells us of the remarkable highs and lows of her becoming the true first female drummer in a New York punk band and befriending those ridiculously talented people, that were changing the face of music at that moment in history. The Ramones, Talking Heads, The Mumps, her band the Student Teaches and of course, Blondie. Her greatest influence and mentor was to be David Bowie! She saw him in concert when just 14 yet 3 years later, was to experience his remarkable and complex vision and understanding, up close and quite personal. Her relationship with Blonde keyboard man Jimmy Destri, meant
her life was transformed, only to be nearly shattered due to illness a few years later.
Read this and marvel at the excitement that emanated from that part of Manhattan, back in the 70s. You will feel you are there with the author.

[Eric Marinelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found The Girl in the Back to be, honestly, a very engaging piece of narrative nonfiction. The book is an excellent snapshot of 1970s New York City and provides an unparalleled view into the city's punk culture during the era. Laura's prose is extremely relatable and intensely written—she powerfully conveys what it's like to be an adolescent reaching out into the world for the first time. And the punk world, no less. The vivid photography really brings the narrative to life and gives a visual frame to the writing itself. Of course, it's also fascinating to get an inside view from Laura as to what rock icons like David Bowie and Blondie were like in 70s, especially in light of Bowie's passing. I've always been very interested in stories of women in the male-dominated rock and punk worlds, and this book is a truly superb and compelling addition to the genre.

[Poptartk · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a female member of several bands around the same time the Student Teachers were forming, coming up, and almost grabbing the brass ring, this memoir really resonates. So many of her experiences were mine (as my first band almost grabbed the brass ring as well). The big difference was that we were playing a pretty vibrant scene in central New York rather than in NYC (which would have been our dream). It was good to know that so much of what her band experienced my band did too, although without the really heavy-duty rock star connections. It brought back a lot of memories.

Quite an enjoyable book.

[Margo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A group of high schoolers bond over the NYC new wave scene, form a band, and meet loads of influential people. Blondie's lyricist (Jimmy Destri) falls for the drummer (Laura), who enters the world of celebrity, hates it, and ultimately gives it up and returns to school. Lots of interesting details.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this look into the life of a young girl who becomes a drummer in a band. She matures early and experiences a lifetime of changes too much for her young age but yet interesting and surreal.

[Jackson Vasicek · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was well written but the title is extremely misleading. I was expecting something entirely different than I got and that made the book difficult to enjoy. The title is essentially “click bate” this book has next to nothing to do with being a female drummer in the 70’s rock scene.

[Angela G · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this rock and roll memoir from a female drummer’s point of view of the NYC 70s music scene. I especially appreciated her unique insight into David Bowie from her interactions with the music icon. I’m probably going to read it again!

[Althea · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an exciting life for a sixteen year old high school student. She finds herself right in the middle of the punk rock scene in New York City and brings the reader along for the ride.

[Steven Garbas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It's such a unique story running underneath my favourite music scene. Well written, and a little sad, but a little uplifting too.